Wednesday 2 December 2015

Rival Sons - Great Western Valkyrie [Tour Edition], album review

RS do CCR's LAICSTL and HP's BC, some recorded at JJS, OK?

My reviews of Rival Sons, including this album minus the tour edition addition, can be found here, so this is a quick reminder of the band's excellence and a comment on that extra disc: all six further tracks are great, 2 recorded at the initial Valkyrie sessions and 3 at Norway's Juke Joint Studios.

Opener Too Much Love is more signature rock, predominate slide guitar and Jay Buchanan's superb vocal - always; My Nature is a powerful ballad; Open My Eyes [live at JJS] has great acoustic slide; the first big gem is the cover of CCR's Long As I Can See the Light [JJS], again an acoustic version; penultimate is Where I've Been [JJS] continuing with the acoustic slide and JB's emotive singing, and closer Black Coffee is a wonderful cover of the Ike and Tina Turner song made famous by Humble Pie - Buchanan is no Steve Marriott clone [the latter too brilliantly unique for that] but if anyone could give this a worthy homage in performance, Rival Sons certainly succeed, and as further reverence to HP and SM, the song has female backing singers too - a musical development Marriott made for the Humble Pie album Eat It.

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